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Advice to NooBs Re: Eating right.

This was actually my reply to a private mesage that I received, but there's quite a lot of valuable information in it for the noobies. Here goes...

Originally Posted by Makram

so if I weight around 177 I should be eating around 180g of portein a day

Yes. Definitely. Always. You need to eat protein every two to four hours. Missing a single meal can undo everything you did in the gym the prior day. Without a fresh intake of protein every 2-4hours your body wil start to break your muscles down into glucose for energy. You want your body to use fat for fuel, not your muscles (i.e. protein).

Originally Posted by Makram

keep fat to 10 g a meal(with fish oil or olive oil) 50g of carbs and 40g of protein each meal. so if I ate 5 meals a day with that ratio can I have this: 250g carbs, 200g of portein, 50 g of fats....

No! You've misunderstood a little bit. 10% of calories should come from fat. However, per my last post "There are four calories in a gram of protein. There are four calories in a gram of carbohydrate. There are nine calories in a gram of fat."

If 10% of your calories come from fat, that's 200 calories (on a 2000 calorie diet). However, since there are nine calories per gram of fat you only need 22g of fat for the whole day. i.e. 3 or 4 grams of fat per meal. Preferably 3g because that'll leave you a little under 10% (which is fine).

I strongly recommend you take a multi-oil supplement. GNC has one called Multi-Oil. It's packed with Essential Fatty Acids which your body needs. These are also called Omega3,6&9 oils. They're found naturally in nuts, fish and egg yolks (to name a few) but, since you only need a little of these oils (and egg yolks, for example, are jam-packed with colesterol), I recommend using a supplement instead of sourcing them from your diet. 3 of GNC's Multi-Oil oil-caps (i.e. 1 serving) has 2grams of fat in it which fit well into a meal with 1-2 grams of fat in it (like a tuna/mayo sandwich - fat free Mayo, of course! Regular mayo has 9g or 10g of fat in one tablespoon! c-r-a-z-y!

As a general rule of thumb avoid anything white (except egg whites, which you can eat all day long!). Never eat white flour, ever. No white bread, pasta, noodles, cakes, etc etc. White flour acts just like sugar in your body. As you learn more about insulin you'll realize exactly what I mean. You wont' even want to eat that stuff when you know what it does top you. It'll put you off for life, even if you currently love those types of foods.

Originally Posted by Makram

if so, will I still see muscle gain while on this diet..

Maybe at first (if you haven't worked out for a while) but not long-term. If you eat more food than you need you'll build muscle. If you eat less calories than you need you'll lose weight. Your primary concern while losing weight is to protect your muscles. Eat protein, then eat some more protein 2-4hours later, and then (you've guessed it) eat protein again 2-4hours after that!

Originally Posted by Makram

any meal ideas u can give..liek for breakfast, lunch etc.....

once I prepared my diet can I send it to u so u can critique it?

Here's what I want you to do...
Open an account at Fitday.com and plug in some stuff that you plan to eat while on your calorie deficit (I hate the word "diet"). Make meals.

EXAMPLE: Enter some chicken, sweet potatoes (Regular potatoes are white. Try to avoid them. Avoid mashed potatoes at all costs), beans, carrots and maybe a side salad. Then adjust the quantities until you have your 50:40:10 ratio. If you need to add an egg white or ½glass of fat-free milk to get the protein levels up.

Just play around.

2 slices of bread (180cal) with a whole can of tuna (150cal) with 1 tblsp of fat free mayo(15cal) is a great meal (for example). It has very little fat (2g). It's very high in protein and has adequate carbs for energy.

There's no need to plan your whole diet out in advance. Just invent meals by using Fitday.com. You can do it all day long. Make your own recipe book if you want to.

Say, for breakfast, you want some toast and eggs, but you don't know exactly how much you should eat. Log into fitday.com and enter a slice of toast(90cal). Enter maybe 6 eggs whites (100cal). Ask yourself... Does that make a good meal? The answer is No! It's high protein (to protect your muscles). It has carbs, for energy. But it's only 180 calories! Your body will think it's starving if that's all you feed it. You don't want your body thinking that, ever! So change it a little bit. Add a cup of fat free milk (80 cal). It's looking better now. It's incredibly high in protein (which is fine - don't worry about your carbs being too low. Just get your protein OVER 1g per 1lb of body weight and drink plenty of water - A high protein diet is hard on your kidneys otherwise) Anyway... Our breakfast is now up to 270 cal, but that's still not good enough. We only have 1g of fat, so maybe we could add our oil supplement. The extra 2g of Omega oils adds another 18 cal to our breakfast. We're now up to 285 cal. Getting there! So what else. Hmm... Maybe a second peice of toast? Add it and see. The extra slice gives you an additional 90cal taking your total to 375. Not bad. High carb. Very high protein. Low fat, but it does include your daily recommended amount of Omega oils.

That's it then. Settled. Breakfast will be 2 slices of toast, six egg whites, 1cup of fat free milk and three multi-oil caps. Add a multi-vitamin for good measure and you're as healthy as you could ever be.

See how that worked?

You can eat whatever you like. Just get the size of the meal and the protein:carb:fat ratios right.

Enter a rough draft of a meal then fiddle with it until the ratios are good. If every meal is the correct ratio, your entire day will be the right ratio too.

One last thing. Avoid saturated fats as best you can. 99% of saturated fats are solid at room temperature. You'll end up with some in your diet becuase you'll find them in most meats for example. Don't worry too much about that. But never use butter on toast for example.

Also, avoid hydrogenated oils. These are actually man-made saturated fats and they are absolutely terrible for you. I'm not joking when I tell you that you'll kill yourself eating hydrogenated oils like margarine. They get in your blood, block your arteries, make your heart work double-time. And they are very difficult to get out of your body. If you want you toast to have buttery taste get a fat free spray (like PAM) and spray that on it. Seriously. Don't eat that shit. You'll be a walking time-bomb.

To the best of my memory, I'm pretty sure that in BurnTheFat-FeedTheMuscle Tom Venuto says to cut quickly dropping your fat down to 10% is perfectly OK. I'll have to dig it up and see if I can find where it was that it said that.

10% or less of my calories have been coming from fat for quite a while.